I still believe you need to be aware of how the numbers are derived and their limitations. Also they should only be used in conjunction with watching games, not to prove something you think you see, but to identify trends and spot things you should look for.

I thought this was one of the best comments from Muir.

And while Dowbiggen calls this data “manna from heaven,” I’m thinking the vast majority of fans are just comfortable with the old Howie Meeker “Stop it right there, OK, watch what Trevor Johansen does here” style of analysis. It’s really all they need.

Sadly, we don't get any Howie Meeker analysis any more. I wish we did. Howie not only recognized great plays, but he went out of his way to identify the boneheaded plays that lead to goals and went further to show what should have been done. It was a brilliant segment on HNIC that pulled no punches.

Combining Howie's telestrator work with advanced stats would be a fantastic learning feature. People who now try to do Howie-like work, too often become hung up in a graphics showcase rather than demonstrating sound hockey skills and smarts.

“Statistics are like a lamp post to a drunk: Useful for support but not for illumination,” Burke said. “Statistics are going to tell you something. Where you take that data and where you take that research and apply it and add it to the other data sources you have — that’s where you’ll be successful. If you look at statistics and point to a column and say, ‘We’re drafting this guy’ — have fun. I hope you’re in my division.”

Notice he didn't really discount all stats.. just single column stats or " insufficient data" .. Kind of like the comparison between Bure' and Mogilny.. Bure' was ahead in goals scored but in +/- wasn't even close to Mogilny.. who was a far better defensive player.. The other ( never talked about stat ) is "how many fans does he attract".. this is were Jovo or Tiger although not great hockey players were consistent crowd pleasers and crowds means money .. Yep hockey is a business.. Moneypuck?

One of the things lost on "moneyball" guys is that it still costs money. Sure the A's built a competitive team using sabrematrics but the success was the 2004 Red Sox with the second highest payroll in baseball.

Topper wrote:One of the things lost on "moneyball" guys is that it still costs money. Sure the A's built a competitive team using sabrematrics but the success was the 2004 Red Sox with the second highest payroll in baseball.

It's my understanding Moneyball is more about finding market inefficiency that stats. The A's used advanced stats when no one else did and found a market inefficiency. Now all teams in baseball used the advanced stats and it does largely come down to money because all teams are competing for players with the same knowledge. I assume it's a bit different in hockey when a cap is involved and you have to find value here and there to round out your roster.

"As we like to say, 'We don't know what we don't know,'" says Laurence Gilman, Vancouver's Vice-President of Hockey Operations and assistant general manager. "What we're trying to figure out is what we don't know. This conference helps get us thinking in ways in which we weren't thinking."

"This is a competitive business and sports analytics is untamed territory," Gilman says. "When people were out there discovering a new world, they didn't want anyone else to know what they were doing."

"But believe me when I tell you there are percentage results that allow you to coach and manage your team to hedge bets in certain events."

This year, Boston, Dallas, Edmonton, Tampa Bay, Vancouver and Washington were there. Technically, Anaheim attended too, although Brian Burke spent more time ripping statistical analysis than praising it. I couldn't stop laughing at his quotes ("Statistics are like a lamp post to a drunk: Useful for support but not for illumination"), picturing how much attendees wanted to strangle him.

Fuckin Burkie.

Anyway there's lots of other stuff in there involving teams other than the Canucks..

"This is a competitive business and sports analytics is untamed territory," Gilman says. "When people were out there discovering a new world, they didn't want anyone else to know what they were doing."

"But believe me when I tell you there are percentage results that allow you to coach and manage your team to hedge bets in certain events."

It's been pretty obvious for a number of years that the Canucks use some sort of scoring chance / zone time data tracking system.

They also seemed to figure out early just how beneficial face off deployment was. AV went from normal deployment to the most skewed deployment in the league (by a mile). I highly doubt he got there on his own, it seems far more likely that management crunched some numbers and pushed him in that direction.

Hell when Gillis talked about pumping up Hodgsons trade value, what he was really saying was that once they decided to trade him they were giving him a much higher volume of offensive zone starts, that's how much the team believed it matters.

I still believe you need to be aware of how the numbers are derived and their limitations. Also they should only be used in conjunction with watching games, not to prove something you think you see, but to identify trends and spot things you should look for.

I thought this was one of the best comments from Muir.

And while Dowbiggen calls this data “manna from heaven,” I’m thinking the vast majority of fans are just comfortable with the old Howie Meeker “Stop it right there, OK, watch what Trevor Johansen does here” style of analysis. It’s really all they need.

Sadly, we don't get any Howie Meeker analysis any more. I wish we did. Howie not only recognized great plays, but he went out of his way to identify the boneheaded plays that lead to goals and went further to show what should have been done. It was a brilliant segment on HNIC that pulled no punches.

Combining Howie's telestrator work with advanced stats would be a fantastic learning feature. People who now try to do Howie-like work, too often become hung up in a graphics showcase rather than demonstrating sound hockey skills and smarts.

"If that kid could skate and shoot the puck he'd be the best player in the league"

I loved Howie.

Brick Top: Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me.

Cam Charron is BC-raised hockey fan and journalist and acts as the managing editor of The Leafs Nation.

Cam explaining PDO.

The first reference I can find to the PDO number is in August of 2008, when some Edmonton Oilers fans were dissecting the finish of the Oilers in the previous year. Though the team finished out of the playoffs for the second straight year, they closed with a 14-5-1 record, giving fans optimism for youngsters Ales Hemsky (then only 24) Sam Gagner (18) Andrew Cogliano (20) and Robert Nilsson (23).

Vic Ferrari, in an attempt to mitigate some of the optimism, wrote a fantastic post about trivia craps, and the effects of luck on winning and losing. In the comment section, a guy under the handle “PDO” made the following point about the current crop of Oilers:

Hows this for ugly? Lets pretend there was a stat called “blind luck.” Said stat was simply adding SH% and SV% together. I know there’s a way to check what this number should generally be, but I hate math so lets just say 100% for shits and giggles.

You’ll notice the first group tended to get extensions while the second ground tended to get shipped out of town.

PDO’s point was that the addition of team shooting percentage and team save percentage when a player was on the ice could lead a lucky player to make management believe he was “good” and earn an extension.

Last paragraph:"And, because of the above, it shouldn't be a surprise that Paul MacLean once famously stated that a team has to score its way to the Stanley Cup. That's a high-level of understanding, and probably one of the many reasons why Ottawa's play hasn't taken a precipitous downturn after an absurd run of player injuries."